Stargate Homeworld: Breaking Point

At a computer terminal in the cavernous Homeworld operations center, Aleksandr Kamarov was running some analysis. To the outside observed he was just another figure seated at one of the many long desks that ran parallels from the front to the rear of the room, surrounded by numerous monitors featuring images, text and coding. But the Russian was unique, and for once it wasn't because he was the only Communist allowed in the Pentagon. He was unique because, along with only a handful of specialists from Homeworld Command, he was trying to save the world not from invading aliens or an off-world plague, but rather a terrorist.

Three giant monitoring, dominating the room's front wall, displayed various images from around the world. Satellite surveillance feeds, banking trends of suspected foreign spies, a video conference with high ranking generals. Kamarov ignore them, paying attention only to the small sliver of coding on his screen. Computer forensics had traced a number of bizarre, almost nonsensical emails from the Ice Queen to various localities across the United States. There was a school in California, a school in Missouri, a private residence in Alaska, and a message sent from somewhere in the state of Florida.

But it was the five emails sent from within Washington that were the focus on Alek's attention.

Alek had been part of a team that had painstakingly collected video surveillance footage from each of the five email origins, covering 24 hours before they were sent and 6 hours after. Government buildings, shop fronts, ATMs, internet cafes, traffic cameras, if it had a device capable of storing footage the team had gathered it. Now, the fruits of their labours were sitting in the Homeland mainframe, just waiting for analysis.

The engineer's fingers flew across his keyboard and he tidied up the last few lines of coding. Fingers crossed, they'd find something.

0900 Hours
Homeworld Command
Operations Centre
Washington DC

His hand snaked its to the coffee much that was kept not too far off. And during the course of the night had been re-filled many times over. He had gotten a call to report to the Operation Centre as he had finished his short shift with the NCIS that afternoon. Kirkwood needed his techie for some computer work over which Eric was certain could have waited till the end of the week. Alas life was such that he had pulled a short straw from. Grunting he brought the mug to his lips, when none of the coffee reach his lips he scowled.

Then looked at the tracking system he was running and analysing at the same time. Some of the data he was reading wasn't making any sense, rubbing his face, mumbled an oath under his breath, deciding to leave his console for a moment to grab coffee and break before something exploded. Either his brain or computer screen.

Moving past the lady with red hair, he heard her comment, to his sleep deprived self it was quite not so amusing, shaking his head he walked along. If he wasn't careful he would exactly what he would never do; start a rant. Returning few minutes later he sat back in his seat and leaned on its rest with a groan as his back send a sound of protest. Just few more hours, hang in there, he said to himself silently.

Picking his work again he was sure a pattern wasn't long way away from being discovered. Putting the paper down he looked at the pool of faces, "Do we have a hint of motive as to why someone would do this?" He asked as he thought of this as if it was one the murder case from NCIS, but without a murder or dead body to get clues from. Without a motive, he would have little to work with, other than doing hacks or some tech work.

Tag: Logan Blackwood, Farrah Byrne, Cara Coyle, Sean "Mantis" Connolly, Aleksandr Kamarov, Aiko Tanaka >

The "geeks" of Homeworld Command had been hard at work all night, including Aiko. This wasn't exactly the ideal situation for anyone, especially her though. The closer they got to finding the Ice Queen, the closer they got to finding Hector, which meant the closer her family came to being brutally murdered by the insane man. Aiko had been placed in Homeworld Command to keep the heat off of Hector and his gang and to make sure that whatever valuable information they needed was quietly handed off. The last thing Aiko had provided them was blueprints of the facility, blueprints that had been found by "Dulles" on their visit to Colombia.

Aiko could only imagine how angry Hector was when he found out and visions of her family being harmed danced in her head.

As she took a sip of her now lukewarm coffee the young Asian woman lifted her gaze to the large screen in the front of the room when it changed. Each email that had been sent from the Ice Queen appeared in front of them and as her light brown eyes scanned over them even she could tell that there were two emails out of place. One being the one that was sent to the Ice Queen's "leader" and the other that had been sent to her, Aiko.

Despite the email being sent to spam, all emails that came through their addresses were flagged and scanned. This being one of them that was only recovered within the past 24 hours. Aiko had tried her best to hide it completely, she had deleted it, traced it as far back as she could and she thought she had gotten rid of all signs of it ever appearing but some tech at Quantico was able to dig it up and now it shone proudly on display for all of Command to see.

Anyone with half a brain could start to question and things could go awry.

The young Asian woman shook it off, and instead her gaze went back to the work in front of her. She had been tasked with scouring through known terrorist cells to see if any seemed to have any ties to this "Ice Queen" but Aiko knew she could find nothing. Hector's team was completely off the grid, which is why they had been so powerful and untraceable. She knew what the man looked like, however, but even after hours of searching for him on her own there were no records that had been found.

The only logical conclusion was that he had changed everything about to himself - even features that were skin deep. They were looking for a ghost.

Farrah glanced up from her work as Logan sat down - offering her yet another cup of coffee. Setting down the now empty one, she latched onto the steaming cup before her. In reality, the Doctor was a bit of a coffee snob. Back at her apartment, she had a coffee grinder where she ground a bit every day from some rather nice beans she had acquired. This habit she had nursed since her early years in college - but was forced to abandon during her time overseas. Now that she was actually sleeping a bed she could call hers, the woman had picked up the habit again. However, when a terrorist was at large - Farrah hardly felt it appropriate to push away coffee. The brown stuff was hardly designed for elegant flavor or a kick that wouldn't make you drop. It was created to keep you awake and nothing more. That's why she kept her 'office coffee' black. Why mask the kick when that's the reason you were drinking it?

"Thanks," she nodded, shortly before Logan stood up again.

She still wasn't sure what to make of the man. The problem with working with other people who understood the mind, was that they were hard to read.

Blackwood began calling orders - bringing things up on the large screen. As he called for certain people to do certain things, Farrah silently scanned the room. This wasn't Dulles. Well - Alek was there, though she still didn't know him very well. They had been on the team together briefly. The other faces were ones that she had seen in passing or on various slips of paper.

The expressions that filled the room were a mix of determination, sleepy annoyed haze, and even a bit of fear.

Calling Donaldson over, Logan returned to her side - apologizing for needing to bring the kid over.
"Then we just choose our words carefully," she smiled, idly clicking a pen she wasn't using.

The man - who was honestly rather young in Farrah's opinion - headed towards Logan and herself. Setting himself up near them, he greeted Blackwood before finally setting himself near them.

"Allo," she greeted, "So let's start simple. What do you know off the very top of your head? About Ice Queen, of course."

A simple tactic - well not tactic. She was curious what instantly came to mind without any deeper questions or forcing him to think about anything in particular.